Gerasimos Krassas, Spiros Karras, Kostas Boboridis & Evagelos Spanos

It has been reported recently that selenium (SE) administration over a 6-month period significantly improved the eye involvement in patients with mild GO.

Aim: To investigate SE levels in such patients and find out if they differ from controls, finding which might explain the beneficial effect of SE in such patients.

Patients: One hundred and four patients (82F) mean age 47.88±827 (S.D.) (range 3265) with mild form of GO, with a disease duration of <18 months were studied. All the patients had been euthyroid for at least 2 months after antithyroid drugs or surgery or 6 months after I131 radioactive iodine. No patients received previous treatment for GO, except for local measures. Thirty normal individuals (18 F), mean age 50.13±9.54 (range 3265) were used as controls. In all patients and controls SE serum levels were measured by atomic absorption method. Normal range for SE in our population is 46143 μg/l. Also, FT4, TSH, TPO Ab, TG Ab and TRAb were measured in all patients by chemiluminescence.

Results: Mean SE levels in the GO group was 66.8±12.9 while in the controls was 65.6±15.8. These results were not significant (P=0.672). No correlation was found between SE levels and FT4, TSH, TPO Ab, TG Ab and TRAb.

Conclusions: No difference in SE levels was found between patients with mild GO and controls. Also, no correlation was found between SE and all the other thyroid parameters studied. These findings indicate that the beneficial effect of SE is not associated with its blood concentrations and other mechanism should be investigated to explain this action.